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Annie Jacobsen is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, investigative journalist, and bestselling author. Her latest book, “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” is out now. www.anniejacobsen
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What's your own experience? Um, see, I don't have a desired outcome. I mean, I would love it if aliens were real, but when someone starts talking about disinformation and propaganda campaigns, but they want you to believe them, but don't listen. I'm here telling you the truth. I'm here telling you the truth. I'm not saying I'm telling you the truth at all. That's why I was like, let's wait for hour three because it's too explosive. People have such a horse in the race. Yeah. Already they... With aliens, you think? Well, I mean, maybe you are neutral. I don't know. I know I'm neutral. Yeah. I will listen. I absolutely want aliens to be real. 100%. Wouldn't it be interesting? I'm not neutral, but I am neutral in my perceptions. And when I look at things, I go, hmm, I don't know about that. Me too. I want to see a picture. Like, what do these guys look like? I mean, what did they do to them? Did he describe what kind of surgical alterations? I stayed with the source. I mean, after the book published, I would go and visit him. We'd sit in a Chinese restaurant and eat and talk, and I would try to get a droplet of information out of him. And what was he doing? Avoiding it? Oh my God. He avoided it. I mean, look, here's another thing. When the book came out, his wife of 65 years knew it was him. Okay? And I went out to Las Vegas and sat there in a room with the source and his wife. And she said, tell me this isn't true. Tell me you made this all up to her husband. And he said, it's the truth. I mean, that's a triangular version of getting at the truth. But again, to reiterate, I believe he believes what he told me was the truth. That was the truth he was told. I think there's certain agents that think it's fun to fuck with reporters and journalists and make things up. I really do. And I think, especially when they're talking about secret information that they were sworn to protect, and then all of a sudden they want to talk to someone that they don't even know on the sneak tip, let's meet at a diner. I'm going to tell you everything. That's not how we met. Well, I mean, however you met. Yeah. I met because I was interviewing nuclear weapons engineers who were setting off nuclear bombs in area 51, I mean, in the Nevada test site, area 12, area 23. And they all said to me, you've got to talk to the top engineer of all this weaponry. And they gave me his name. And we talked for days and hours about nuclear weapons. And then in one conversation, he began to cry and told me this story that I was like, what? Why was he crying? He was crying because he participated in our version of the human experiments. Because what the Russians do, we do it. Look, I've written five books about this. We altered people to make them look like aliens? According to him, we had a small program in 1951 where we wanted to see how the Russians did what they did, how they made human beings look like this. So what did they do, take prisoners or something? Who did they alter? He said they were handicapped children. Oh, Jesus. And he told me that he participated in this. So again, I mean, unless you have someone that lost their mind at age 90 and was willing to tell their wife of 65 years, I lost my mind. So he's saying that he participated in something that altered handicapped children. When you say handicapped, you mean like Down syndrome or something like that? And they made them look like aliens and then killed them? Like what did they, what did they do with this? This is where we get into drops of information coming in. But what I can say is he had a grandchild that was born that way. And the grandchild did not live long. The grandchild died. And it made him feel so guilty about what he had done that he felt compelled to confess, if you will. And I remember saying to him, why are you telling me this? Why don't you tell a priest? And he said, a priest would judge me and I can tell you won't. Why wouldn't you judge him? I'd judge him. Well, I guess that's why I'm a born journalist, Jo, because I really try not to judge people. I mean, my new book, Surprise Kill Vanish, it's about assassins. It's about people who work for the CIA who do what needs to be done on the ground in the name of national security. I don't judge them. This is why, you know, what's really at issue here is morality, right? Yeah. I mean, can I tell you how I got the idea for this book? Sure. But let me, before we go any further, so. You want to talk about the aliens. Was he saying that there have never been any encounters with alien spacecraft? He was totally neutral about aliens. He had nothing to do with aliens. He could have cared less. He didn't watch the X-Files. What was his take on Bob Lazar? His take on Bob Lazar was that he probably saw something that the government had an extension of the program. I mean, he didn't know that was speculative. We didn't talk about that. I mean, you know, other than inference, he was very limited in his, in the information that he would get out. But I mean, I used 79 sources in that book that all went on the record in name. And he was the one anonymous source because, but like I said, you know, he told me after he died that I could tell the whole story. Are you going to? I might. I might come back. You want to write another book? Well, if you give me a break and back off the subject, I might come back and tell you and your audience his name. What are you saying back off the subject? This is your book. I want to promote your book. I know you want to promote your new book, but I want to promote this book as well. I mean, I'm teasing you, right? I know you are. It's like, it's an astonishing story. And I think the best line of all is that people that read about that in the very end of what we did, they go, I wish they were aliens. So Stalin created some sort of a craft that mimics. You're going to read it. That's what you're going to do the rest of the afternoon. Nope. I'm going to come back on your show after you read it. Well, this is a podcast and we're talking. I think we should probably get into this a little bit. Okay. Come on with the questions. I'm asking the questions. Are you? Oh, right. As a journalist. Yeah. Now, Stalin and the Russians created something that mimicked a UFO, something that looked like it would be from another planet. Is that what they did? Mothership. In those days, drones were, there was a mothership and a drone was attached to it and it was jettisoned off. Okay. So according to- In those days? Well, in 1947, 48, right? What do you mean by- Well, they didn't, I mean, that was drone technology then. Okay. So they created a mother craft, like an aircraft, and then the drone is like a small aircraft under it and it gets jettisoned off. And that was what the craft was. It was jettisoned off. So Stalin actually, according to the source, invaded our airspace, which was the deep embarrassment to Truman. So we invaded our airspace and then let this drone crash land on the ground with these things that turned out to be human. They looked like aliens, but they turned out to be humans that were manipulated surgically to look like aliens. Yes, as a way to, and remember, I mean, not remember, but where this was, was very close to a nuclear weapons base, to our White Sands military base. I mean, this is like not a place you want the Russians to be able to get near. Right. I mean, what was interesting is that Area 51, we then went out and mimicked all of those. One of our early drones was a mimicry of that. It was the, there was an M-21, which was the mothership and a D-21, which was the daughtership. So- How did they pilot them? Was it wirelessly? Like we do now? No, no. Then it was like there was a pilot in the mothership and they kind of let it go. And it flew off. I mean, there's incredible stories of what the CIA was able to do out there at Area 51 with their air branch, you know. The technology, they're always ahead of technology. That's what's remarkable. Well, what Bob Lazar did film that was really shocking was the filming of these drones flying around and performing these really crazy, you've seen those videos, I'm sure, right? In the 80s, it gets really crazy with what they're able to do and what they're, but I mean, why I like looking at history is because you can see the progression, you know. You see how science evolves, you know, bit by bit. And then there's these great breakthroughs because what the government is always looking for is called a revolution in military affairs, right? And that's certainly what drone technology did later on as drones became developed after the Vietnam War. So in the 1980s, when Bob Lazar was filming all this stuff, you think this was similar to the technology that we see publicly described today in terms of like what drones are capable of? Sure. I mean, that's all- They probably had something like that back then. Where, you know, when the F-117 was revealed during the first Gulf War, that aircraft was being developed for 20, 25 years out at Area 51. Actually at Area 52 was where they had it set up to develop that stealth technology. Think about, and what was amazing, talk about keeping secrets. They had something like 10,000 people working on that. No one knew about it. That story was never broken by the press, not by anyone. It just suddenly appeared in the Gulf War and took out Saddam Hussein's, you know, facilities. That's a revolution in military affairs. What becomes interesting is then it becomes obsolete because now everybody knows about it and everybody's going to mimic that. And now you have to have a new weapon system and that's the military industrial complex. So was this drone aircraft that was released from the mothership, was this capable of autonomous flight or was it just, they just threw it out there and let it crash? The latter, right? And remember that information I am very limited to. That's why it's 12 pages. It's like the source gave me these little bits of information, which I felt was important to include because it speaks to the big issue. Why is Area 51 classified? I mean, now it's not. President Obama was the first president to actually say Area 51 publicly. Some people say because of my book, right? Meaning it was out, the secret was out. But before that, I went through 10,000 pages of documents from the National Archives and every place you see the word Area 51 was actually redacted, right? Why would you keep that so secret? I mean, all the guys that I was interviewing say they could call it, you know, Groom Lake. They could call it the test facility. They could call it Paradise Ranch, but they couldn't say Area 51. Why? And the source said, well, because we did this horrible program out there and the government doesn't want anyone to know about that ever. I mean, there are stories of like somebody asking Bill Clinton, you know, about Area 51, him going white. I mean, human experiments, who wants to be part of that? It's horrible. But the human experiments were, were they limited to this mimicry of the Russian experiments where they were trying to get people to look like aliens or were there something else going on? Well, my goodness. And now the declassified documents tell us how many different human experiments were going on around nuclear weapons. Okay. Horrible experiments where they were subjecting people to radiation because they wanted to know they felt, well, it's more important to know what happens to people than to not know. And so they would take groups of people that say had cancer or something and test them. So there's no doubt that the government has experimented on humans. It's just, is that something that is wise to make public? And you know, there's two sides of the coin on that. I mean, you, you, when you reveal these kinds of things, when you write about them, I mean, people get really upset and, you know, vilify the government, partially with good reason and partially it's like bad for national security. So I think that's the justification on the part of the defense department to keep things secret. That makes sense. Wow. That's a, that's an interesting take that I never thought of before. But if I was Stalin and I was trying to air quotes, fuck with the Americans, that's maybe where I would do it. Hey man, you got a problem? aliens, they're coming. And there was, if people, it's hard for people that live in 2019, especially if you're young to really imagine a world, not only without the internet, but with two television channels, right? And radio, which was where people got all their information from. I mean, was there two channels? How many channels were they in 1947? Maybe three. Maybe. Maybe three. I mean, it was radio in world war two, right? Most people want radio. Yeah, mostly radio and newspapers. And that's where people were getting their information. And there was a mass hysteria where people were absolutely terrified that we were going to be invaded, which is why when Orson Welles, war of worlds, which when they released it, when they did it on the air, they were very clear that this is going to be a reading of Orson Welles, war of worlds book, or that H.G. Wells, excuse me, war of, right? It was H.G. Wells book and Orson Welles Reddit. And when they were talking about this on the radio, a lot of people missed that part, right? And so as the radio went on, as the broadcast went on and people were tuning in later in the day, it erupted in mass hysteria. People were freaking out. Hundreds of thousands of people really did think that it was, and it was also something that was recreated in other countries. I don't know if you know that. They did that in other countries in different languages when they saw how cute it worked in America. And, you know. So you see, you can see the logic. I mean, at first it sounds absurd and it sounds ridiculous. And that's why I was sweating because it's like, I know. Right. But when you think it through, and I challenge you to read the whole book because you start piecing together these various ideas and disinformation becomes less vague and more specific and you go, ah, that's how it works. And you begin to see how people's perception and how they're easily manipulated factors into national security, just like you just described. Stalin knew about that. He was a master. He was the master of propaganda. He invented it. I mean, he didn't invent it, but he invented it in a, you know, on the political stage to be used to mess with another country's perception of things. Think of what he did with brainwashing, right? Okay. So like in the fifties, and this is journalists, you know, said, so there was a journalist who was putting out stories about brainwashing and there was this idea, which is well taken that totalitarian governments brainwash people. And this became a big code word. It was introduced into the American lexicon in 1950. Well, then we're in the Korean war. Our pilots start getting shot down. They're put on TV by the communists saying terrible things about America, the American pilots. And suddenly it was like, they've been brainwashed. It was very convenient to have that story. So these things work part and parcel. And you've got all kinds of smart people behind the scenes, knowing this, looking at it, examining it, and using it to their advantage to stay where? In the poll position. That's the goal of the US government. So the propaganda that we did that sort of copied, Stalin's, we're kind of playing catch-up in that sense. I mean, we're playing catch-up, then we're ahead, then we're behind. It's always a, it's a game. I mean, you're a competitor, you know this. That's a crazy thing to do, to make a fake spaceship and just let it slam into the ground with a bunch of people that you cut up to look like aliens. Did he say specifically what kind of modifications they made to people that made them look like aliens? Drips. You'll read it in those 12 pages. Come on with this 12 pages. I'm telling you that because you're asking me these questions as if I spent, I mean, look, I did spend literally hundreds of hours with a source. We sat there and talked about everything and I would try to squeeze out just like you're trying to squeeze out of me and that's what I'm saying. Read it because I literally tell you everything that there is. I think what's most interesting about the source and why I might come back and talk to you about it and tell you who he is on your show. Oh. Because. Because. Because of his backstory. Mm. Right? Why he did what he did. How he wound up in the Manhattan Project. Sounds like he was probably Jewish from Germany. No? No. I'm trying. Okay. I'm trying to get you. Hahaha.